‘Miss Mack?’ the cop said. He had a plastic folder held over his head to keep the rain off him.
‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s in the—’ My voice died in my throat as, at the same split second I saw down the path into the back of the cop car and Paddy sitting there, I heard Shannon’s kitchen door bang.
‘She’s getting away!’ I pulled myself out of the way of the cop, fitter than he looked as he raced through the house and out again, yelling for his partner.
The passenger side of the police car flew open and another man in plain clothes skidded and scrambled up the path and round the side of the cottage.
I walked down, slowly, in the rain, and bent to look in at him. He was handcuffed to a bar that ran along the back of the front seats.
We stared at each other a good while. We said plenty in that silence, as the rain washed my head, cleared my mind.
‘You said you saw Mrs Sloan putting her bins out,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t true. None of it’s true.’
‘He did offer me a partnership,’ Paddy said. ‘That’s true. Only I said I wouldn’t take on St Angela’s so he started winding it down.’
‘St Angela’s is legit?’
‘Of course it’s legit! This isn’t the Wild West. How could someone fake an adoption agency?’
I took a step to steady myself. ‘Did Shannon have a brother?’
‘Shannon’s got two brothers. They live near her parents.’
‘But neither one of them is poor Sean, with his bad eyes and his clicking barrels.’
‘No.’
‘So the whole thing about her twin and the adoption … nothing’s true? Her Scandinavian mum and the poetry. None of it?
‘I don’t know if her mum writes poetry,’ Paddy said. ‘Could do. They’re not close.’
‘Did Lovatt kill his family?’ I said. I had to put a hand against the car for support.
‘Don’t be stupid. Denise killed herself and the kids. Because of the Huntington’s.’
‘And what about what your mum said? About the clinic and the little boy?’
‘She’d say anything for me.’
‘But she said she’d met Myna Sloan too!’
‘Shannon worked everything in,’ said Paddy.
‘And she fainted! Your mum did. Yesterday.’
‘She bottled it when Shannon walked in. You think she’s scared of you, Finnie? She’s petrified of Shannon.’
‘She’s right to be,’ I said. ‘And I don’t really scare her, do I? Lying to me scared her. The thought of me seeing through her scared her.’
He was barely listening. He had a dreamy look on his face, thinking about Shannon. It was a look I knew. I’d just never known what put it there.
‘You didn’t act as if you’d just met her, you know.’ He shrugged. ‘On Wednesday. At lunchtime. When you started talking about our rent and your partnership in front of her.’
‘You didn’t twig,’ he said.
‘So what’s the truth? How did you get the job? Why did he make you a partner? And what about my job?’
‘Oh, I am his kid,’ Paddy said. ‘That’s true. My mum used to work in his office in Edinburgh.’
‘So she’s really your mum?’
‘Yep.’
‘She took your baby pictures?’
‘Yep. One of them’s in the same living room, Finnie.’
‘So,’ I said. I was feeling a bit steadier now. I stood up straight again. ‘You and your girlfriend, Shannon, killed your boss and his wife so that you’d inherit his firm and his estate? And you cooked up a story so … insane that no one would question it? Is that it?’
‘You bought it, didn’t you? A deacon of the kirk, no less. You swallowed it whole.’
‘I thought I’d caught them out,’ I said. ‘Tuft and Lovatt. I thought I’d caught them lying about when they met.’
Paddy’s head jerked up.
‘She said twenty-five years ago when Berwick station went automatic,’ I said. ‘But that was over thirty years back. Shannon checked it.’
‘Oh, Shannon checked?’ said Paddy.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Idiot. She must have been lying. Only … why would she lie about that?’
‘For fun,’ Paddy said. ‘For the hell of it. Or maybe he did meet Tuft before Denise and the kids died. Maybe he did dump his family for wifie-poo number two. Tuft didn’t have to live in a semi, knitting for cash, did she?’
I nodded. ‘I’m still trying to get my head round it,’ I said. ‘Brazil? Sean Mack? Simon Dudgeon? St Angela’s? It was all … a dust storm?’
‘And the papers I doctored to show to Abby and the signed documents I left behind so we’d have a reason to go back up there. Then you left your bag, which was even better.’
‘You’re a good actor,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that about you, but you fooled me over the fax and the email.’ His face showed a flicker. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Weren’t you acting?’
‘She kept changing things. The papers were supposed to be there. The bodies weren’t supposed to move. She wasn’t even supposed to be on the drive on Monday night. In the trees. All that planning and then she kept changing things.’
‘Why?’ I said.
Paddy shrugged, his face drawn up in the creases and puckers that were bound to bring on a migraine. Then he laughed again. ‘For the joy of it,’ he said. ‘Same as how she added all the mad extras, like that barrel video. Mind you, she was right – she showed it to you. And you bought it.’
‘Why did she move the bodies?’ I said.
‘I don’t know!’ That had rattled him, but he recovered. ‘She’ll have had a good reason. She always does.’
‘Because no one would do that for fun, would they?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Maybe,’ I went on, ‘she made all the changes so you’d make mistakes. So you’d end up where you are.’
‘What?’ said Paddy. Even now, sitting in the back of a police car, he couldn’t see past her. ‘No, this wasn’t part of the plan, Finn. And we really did plan. We planned longer than you’d believe.’
‘Try me,’ I said. ‘Tell me how long. You knew about me, didn’t you? About the car crash, the jail time. And me a deacon.’
‘Of course I did. And I knew how ashamed of it you were.’
‘I was selected? I was a stooge?’
‘Well, put it this way. I thought it would come in handy. And it did.’
‘And I take it the oil rig and all that was a load of crap? The old lady client who died? The loan?’
Paddy’s face snapped shut. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That was true. I went to my father – my own bloody father – to help me straighten it out and he did. He gave me the loan and then he told me I had to pay it back. The rig was his idea. It was quick money and it sure as hell felt like prison. He didn’t need the cash, you know. He just wanted me to learn a lesson. So I decided I’d teach him one instead. I had already started planning it that night I met you.’
‘And then you were going to offload me?’
‘Except I didn’t have to,’ Paddy said. ‘You were just about to leave me of your own accord, weren’t you?’
‘Clever,’ I said.
‘Shannon’s a genius,’ said Paddy. ‘Sloan’s secret gave us part of the idea too. Creepy necro Mr Sloan. Shannon just folded it into everything else.’
‘But I don’t understand why Lovatt and Tuft covered for Mr Sloan if he had nothing on them,’ I said.
‘They didn’t!’ said Paddy. ‘They didn’t know Mrs Sloan was lying up there. Only Shannon knew that.’
‘But they said they played mah jongg with her. Sonsie told me they were there on Sunday night.’ I screwed my face up with the effort of remembering. We were sitting in the back pew of the church, Sonsie and me. ‘No!’ I said. ‘I told her. But who told me?’ Paddy said it in chorus with me as I remembered.
‘Shannon.’
Then he went on, ‘If you just say things straight out to people who trust you, nine times out of ten they’ll swallow it
. She taught me that.’
‘Oh, Paddy,’ I said. ‘She didn’t half.’
‘What?’ he asked me, still not seeing.
‘Why did they give her a cottage?’ I said.
‘They didn’t! She paid the going rate. Of course, Lovatt regretted it when she started tightening the screws.’
‘Why did they pretend she didn’t exist?’
‘What?’
‘They said there were two houses when there’s three. What do you mean “screws”?’
‘She pretended she suspected him of killing his children. He was terrified of her.’
‘He was right as well,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who got her wrong, Paddy. You’re handcuffed in a cop car and she’s on the run. Do you really think she’ll stick with you, back up your version, if they catch her?’
‘Course she will,’ he said.
‘You still think you’re in this with her?’
He was shaking but it might have been the cold. I was shaking too. ‘We’re a team. I’m the money and she’s the brains. Some of it went right over your head, you know.’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘If you mean the butterfly?’
‘What butterfly?’
‘The black butterfly on Lovatt’s back. The blood should have been red. All the blood should have been red. The black stain on his back was supposed to make me think that blood was old, right? Make me think that old man was longer dead than Lovatt Dudgeon could have been. Then we’d “work out” that the old man wasn’t Lovatt after all.’
‘Oh, you caught that, did you? Why did you never ask what I was saying? In my sleep.’
‘Too dark?’
‘You were supposed to ask me. And I would “think about it a while” and “realise”.’
‘And I’d be convinced because it would explain why I couldn’t stop thinking about it either. The black butterfly.’
‘Too dark!’ said Paddy. ‘She’s a genius. She can act, forge handwriting and signatures, spin so many different tales no one even knows where to start unravelling them.’
‘She’s very resourceful,’ I said. As I watched, a pale blue people carrier came along the road and pulled in at the Manns’ house. A woman stepped down and looked back along the lane to where the cop car sat with its doors open, and a girl in a dog-collar stood by it in the pouring rain. Then she opened the back doors and shooed a gaggle of teenagers into the house ahead of her. I raised a hand to wave but, as you would, she ignored me.
‘Trouble is, Paddy,’ I added, ‘she’s completely insane. And she’s ruined your life. Too dark is about right.’
I could hear my dad’s car coming. I saw his headlamps picking out raindrops as he came swinging round the corner. I left Paddy sitting there and walked towards the light.
After
I’m a connoisseur of crematoriums now. This one at Warriston is my fourth since January. Mrs Sloan was first, in the small service room at Mortonhall, with only seven of us there. Robert Waugh came through with a eulogy and an address I couldn’t have landed on if I’d had five years to get ready. I’ve felt different about him since that day. He can golf all he wants as long as he’s there to pick up the reins anytime we’re cremating a six-year-old corpse with her husband watching, a police officer on either side of him in the front row.
He didn’t do time for it, poor old Mr Sloan. He got probation and counselling. Which didn’t work. He’s feeble now, stays inside. He’s let the garden go to pot.
Then there was Tuft and Lovatt, after the inquiry. They were done together at Dumfries. ‘A beautiful crem,’ Sonsie Webb told me. And so it was, all blond wood and abstract stained-glass windows. That was packed, of course. All of Simmerton was there. All of the old St Angela’s staff and a good lot of Edinburgh solicitors too. And press, naturally. Oh, the press. Valley of Death! they settled on, as the story got going. And they found the worst, darkest, dreariest winter pictures, the gate lodge looking like a mausoleum and the drive so sinister as it slunk away.
The cameras were right up in our faces as we arrived. They called us by name. Called me by name.
‘Finnie!’
‘Over here, Finn!’
I put my head down and scuttled in with my dad on one side and Robert Waugh on the other. My mum wasn’t well enough that day.
It had started to die down by then, until Tuft and Lovatt’s funeral kicked it up again. Because, of course, no one believed I knew nothing. Well, no one ever does. I didn’t believe the wives of all those monsters knew nothing either, when it was just a gruesome story in the tabloids: Sonia Sutcliffe, Primrose Shipman. Only the combination of me coming clean about that Monday night and both Paddy and Shannon telling the cops – taking such delight in telling the cops – how they’d fooled me put me in the clear.
I assumed I’d lose my job anyway, but I was wrong there. The Church stood by me. It took some time for me to work out why and it hurt a bit, for a while.
But I was getting harder to hurt by then, to be honest. When Paddy killed himself, on remand in his cell, I thought my heart would stop. It didn’t feel like something breaking. It felt like something freezing. Calcifying. As if I could go and stand on a headland with my arms up and be a landmark, but I’d never laugh or sing or hug again. The only thing that bucked me out of my petrified grief was the thought of Elayne. I went to the house. Robert drove; I wasn’t safe behind the wheel just then. But she refused to see me. And in six months she’s kept refusing. But I’ll get her in the end. No one could resist the gift I’m going to give her. She just needs time, because she loved him so. He really was loved. He was loved by all three of us.
They were worried about Shannon after she found out he’d gone. She was on suicide watch for eight weeks. She was in hospital. She’s back in her cell now. There’s only one women’s prison in Scotland so I know exactly what she’s going through every day. I can picture it clearly. Sometimes I wonder if she’s in the same cell I was in. Except it wouldn’t really be the same cell, would it? Not if you’re looking at it as your home for life. I’ll ask her, when I go to visit. Which I will. Which I’ll have to.
Because Shannon wants me to be the guardian of her baby, when it’s born, come September. Elayne fought it and Shannon’s mum, that poor woman, fought it too, but it’s Shannon’s choice as long as I agree. And I agreed. I talked to Robert, got his permission to refuse – ‘Good God in Heaven, Finnie, you’re only human!’ he’d said – then found myself agreeing anyway. At least this way the poor wee thing gets all of us. Shannon’s mum would never have let Elayne within a mile. And vice versa. But I want both grannies on Team Baby. It’s going to need all the help it can get, with that start in life. And no matter what Robert says I reckon it’s my duty. There’s a reason they call a new baby ‘the little stranger’.
I keep calling it ‘poor’ but it’s not. It’s the rightful heir. I get nothing. Paddy didn’t use his real name when he ‘married’ me so we were never really married. That was supposed to make it easier for him to walk away with Shannon.
But the baby’s a different story. Jerusalem, Widdershins, the Bairnspairt, the gate lodge, the cottages. And all those trees. It was Lovatt’s so now it belongs to his grandchild, with me as trustee till it’s twenty-one. An heir in utero was a nice big mess for the lawyers but, thanks to the ‘yet to be born’ clause in Lovatt’s will, and the fact that there were no Dudgeon cousins after all, no one’s arguing.
And since there’s no way I could stay in any of those places, not one single night, I’m happy to let the Church do whatever it wants with them. A halfway house, a children’s retreat, a camp-ground for Scouts and Guides down from Glasgow. It’ll take some fundraising but the sites are free. In a few years, I’ll have a better think about it. Not yet, not now.
The Manns have left. They couldn’t get away quick enough. But I’m letting Mr Sloan stay on. Simmerton’s the only place he’ll ever feel at home. Still close to Myna. Julie pops in on him. Abby’s gone back to Edinburgh to fi
nish her training but Julie started at the health club, which suits her down to the ground, except she’s had to pretend she’s stopped smoking. She nags me to join whenever I see her.
I’ll have plenty to keep me busy without a treadmill. Parttime deacon-work and a new baby and looking after Sonsie, who was so good, looking after me. I lean forward to see if I can glimpse her face, in the front row, but her head’s down and her hat brim hides it. Poor Sonsie. Adam Webb was sitting at the breakfast table, reading out the headlines to her, when a thunderclap of a heart attack came. Sometimes it’s hard to see God’s plan. Sometimes I’m sure there’s no plan at all. But I’ll keep checking.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank:
Lisa Moylett, Zoe Apostolides, Elena Langtry and all at CMM Literary Agency; Nettie Finn, April Osborn, Kelley Ragland, Sarah Schoof, Sarah Grill, Allison Ziegler and all at Minotaur; Krystyna Green, Rebecca Sheppard, Beth Wright, Hazel Orme, Kate Truman and all at Little, Brown; the librarians and booksellers, reviewers and bloggers, posters and tweeters, and all who make this so much less a solitary job day by day; and my dear, patient friends and ever-growing family in the US and UK.
Simmerton is fictional. No character, house, business or charitable organisation in the book is based on any real individual, property or operation.
ALSO BY CATRIONA McPHERSON
Dandy Gilver and the Proper Treatment of Bloodstains
Dandy Gilver and an Unsuitable Day for a Murder
Dandy Gilver and a Bothersome Number of Corpses
A Deadly Measure of Brimstone
The Reek of Red Herrings
Go to My Grave
About the Author
CATRIONA MCPHERSON was born in Scotland in 1965 and lived there until immigrating to the US in 2010. Her Dandy Gilver historical mysteries have won numerous awards, including two Agathas, and her contemporary novels have won two Anthony awards and been Edgar and Mary Higgins Clark finalists. Catriona is a proud member of Mystery Writers of America and a former national president of Sisters in Crime. She lives in Davis, California, where she writes full-time. You can sign up for email updates here.
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